The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern Australia
Michelle Arrow

In
1970 homosexuality was illegal, God Save
the Queen was our national anthem and women pretended to be married to access
the pill. By the end of the decade conscription was scrapped, tertiary
education was free, access to abortion had improved, the White Australia policy
was abolished and a woman read the news on the ABC for the first time.

The
Seventies was the decade that shaped modern Australia. It was the decade of
‘It’s Time’, stagflation and the Dismissal, a tumultuous period of economic and
political upheaval. But the Seventies was also the era when the personal became
political, when we had a Royal Commission into Human Relationships and when social
movements tore down the boundary between public and private life. Women wanted
childcare, equal pay, protection from violence and agency to shape their own
lives. In the process, the reforms they sought — and achieved, at least in part — reshaped Australia’s culture and rewrote our expectations of government.

In
a lively and engaging style, Michelle Arrow has written a new history of this
transformative decade; one that is more urgent, and more resonant, than ever.‘At last, personal politics as national history. In lucid and nimble prose, Michelle Arrow demonstrates that — in the 1970s at least — it was about the relationships, stupid. A revelation.’ — Clare Wright